


black lipstick kisses

by thorkidumpster



Series: color-coded hearts [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, American Football, Artist Loki, Bullying, Cute, Fluff, Happy Ending, Loki (Marvel) Does What He Wants, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki and Thor Are Not Related, M/M, Secret Santa, Short & Sweet, Teenagers, Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, football player thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22126090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorkidumpster/pseuds/thorkidumpster
Summary: if there are worse ways to be outed to your crush, loki sure can't think of them.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Series: color-coded hearts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593505
Comments: 42
Kudos: 276
Collections: Thorki Secret Santa 2019





	black lipstick kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAngryKimchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAngryKimchi/gifts).



> this is my secret santa gift to theangrykimchi! hope you enjoy it! big ol' thanks to mona, as always, for betaing even when i send her shit in the middle of the night

* * *

The sun burns hot and the shiny metal bleachers soak it up to scorch the back of Loki’s thighs. He shifts, glad to not be wearing shorts, even if the dark denim traps more heat against his legs. Sweat beads down Loki’s temple, and he brushes the drop away before it can splash onto the exposed page of his sketch book. Not for the first time, Loki mentally bemoans that he just wasn’t made for such _heat._

A piercing whistle interrupts his internal bitching. The coach on the football field below waves his arms and roars something about… Loki doesn’t know. Quarterbacks, maybe? Loki readjusts his earbuds and turns the volume of his music to just below ‘tinnitus’. With quick, sure strokes, Loki sinks into his sketching; his eyes flicker up to a certain player when he needs reminding of just how broad those shoulders are, how bright that smile is.

And said player is always smiling—forever clapping his hand on a teammate’s shoulder; forever guffawing his stupid laugh with his head thrown back; forever burning himself into Loki’s memory as surely as the sun burns itself into his skin.

Football practice lasts two hours after school. That, incidentally, is how long his drama club used to last. Despite having been a member since he was a freshman, Loki got kicked to the curb a few weeks ago. All for a harmless little prank involving a harmless little garden snake… a bit of payback on the drama teacher for three years of only casting Loki as minor side characters.

But he’d been too afraid to tell his mother, who had dished out a hefty (and nonrefundable) membership fee. So Loki was forced to find another way to spend two hours after classes and an opportunity like this was just too good to pass up.

Even if it did mean Loki has to slather his face with sunblock every half hour.

“Oi! Laufeyson!”

Loki’s head snaps up, eyes already narrowing. He pops out an earbud.

Down on the field, Brock Rumlow makes an obscene gesture with his hips. “Drawing me, baby?” He crows, cupping his hand over his groin. “It’s just as big as it looks, baby, I promise.”

“So not very big at all,” Loki calls back and blows a black lipsticked kiss. The team breaks into cackles while Rumlow’s smug face twists into anger. “Don’t worry, _baby_ , you aren’t my type.” He flips his sketchbook closed and shoves it into his bag. This happens every now and then; Loki’ll just finish his wait in the parking lot.

“Oh yeah?” Rumlow sneers. “You like ‘em big and blond, don’t you?”

Loki freezes.

Rumlow senses his weakness and moves in for the kill. “Comin’ out here just to stare at Thor.” Upon hearing his name, Thor turns, glancing at Rumlow in confusion. “You gonna sneak into the locker room later, huh? Maybe get a show?”

Thor’s expression goes blank and this is like a nightmare, one of those dreams where Loki tries to run, tries to scream, but nothing happens. Loki opens his mouth to spit something, anything, but the words shrivel on his tongue.

“Fuck off, Brock,” Thor says, shaking his head. “What’re you even going on about?”

“Little Loki,” Rumlow says, “wants to suck your dick. Ha! Look at him, yeah he does!”

Thor looks up at Loki, brows furrowed, and only under the weight of that stare does Loki remember how to move again. He bounds down the bleachers, fumbling a few steps while the team catcalls him. Someone shouts followed by a loud thud. The coach blows his whistle. Loki doesn’t look back.

The sun is still merciless, the heat is still oppressive, but Loki feels utterly, achingly frozen.

* * *

Loki takes refuge in the shade by the school’s front doors. From here, he can see where his mom will eventually pull up.

Distracted, Loki picks off bits of his black nail polish. What happened on the field wasn’t the first occurrence—Rumlow is a fuckface, but he usually settles down after Loki snipes back. This time, though…

_Fuck, I’m going to have to find somewhere else to wait for Mom…_

Not to mention somehow avoid Thor for the rest of their lives. They have math together, but maybe Thor will be too embarrassed to say anything. Loki has no doubt that what Rumlow said will be all over the school on Monday. His only solace is that it’s Friday, which gives him two days to think of ways to contain this. Maybe Loki can arrange to come down with some horribly infectious disease and stay home for the rest of the semester. Maybe he could drop out, just get his GED.

(As if either of those things were an option. If he even suggested the second one to Farbauti, Loki wouldn’t have to worry about the rest of the school year; his mother would take care of that by murdering him herself.)

Loki thunks his head back onto the brick wall behind him. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Closing his eyes, Loki focuses his entire being on melting into the concrete. A few minutes into the exercise, however—

“Hey.”

Loki flinches at the sight of Thor standing over him, broad and menacing in his football gear with a duffle bag thrown over his shoulder. He scrambles upright to even the odds; he’s fast, fast enough to duck away if Thor swings—

But instead of yelling or throwing a punch, Thor says, “I’m sorry about Brock.” He rubs his hands together, the skin on his knuckles suspiciously bruised. “I’m… yeah.”

“It’s fine,” Loki replies, stiff. “I’m used to it.”

Thor winces at that. “I’m sorry for that, too.” He gives Loki a truly mournful look, his mouth pinched down into an uncharacteristic frown. “I should have stopped him the first time.”

Bitterness seeps into Loki, an anger that hardens his heart and makes him sneer. “Well, you didn’t.”

Thor ducks his head, his eyes skittering away from Loki’s. “No,” he says, soft.

Loki doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t really care. “I’m guessing you came to apologize?” At Thor’s nod, Loki waves his hand. “Apology given, now leave me alone.”

But Thor doesn’t leave. He shifts on his feet, awkward. “I’m trying to be nice. You don’t have to be such a—”

“A what?” Loki snorts. “An asshole? That’s just who I am. Loki, the flaming gay asshole.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Loki blinks.

Thor raises his eyes again. The son-of-a-bitch looks downright earnest. “You aren’t an asshole. I’ve seen how you help Peter in math—”

“Because he wants to study physics and he’s fucking terrible at math—”

“And Clint told me how you gave him all your notes after his hearing aid busted in Fury’s class and he was too embarrassed to tell—”

“So he would owe me a favor!”

“I don’t believe that,” Thor announces with finality. “I think you’re a ‘flaming gay’,” Thor makes quote signs with his fingers, “snarkbag that likes to pretend to be an asshole.”

That hits a bit too close to home. “Who are you, the new Freud?” Loki sneers. “Why are you still here, Thor? Surely you have better things to do than psychoanalyze me. Like, oh I don’t know? Practice football?”

Thor exhales, shaky, then takes a deep breath in. He squares himself up as though he were about to march into battle and lowers his duffle bag to the ground. “I’m here… because I wanted to ask for your number.”

A sour taste floods Loki’s mouth. Of course he does. Now that Thor knows—thanks, Rumlow—how big of a crush Loki has, he just became the world’s easiest booty call. And he can’t even fully blame Rumlow; if Loki had just had the sense to brush it off… well. “For hookups,” Loki states flatly.

“Hook—no!” Thor punctuates his denial with an emphatic gesture. “Because I want to take you on a date!”

A thousand cruel barbs jump onto his tongue, but what comes out instead is a blurted, “Why?”

“Because… I think you’re cute. Because you can be nice when you want to be—no, shut up, I’m not done.”

Loki’s mouth snaps closed with a click of his teeth.

“Because you’re funny, too, even if sometimes your jokes are mean.” Thor rakes his hand through his hair. “Because I’ve had a crush on you since we were freshmen. Because I now have a lot of free time after school ‘cause I got kicked off the team.” He raises his hands. “Gonna take a while to wash Brock’s face out of them.”

Loki snorts, then giggles, then breaks out into full-bellied laughter. “Since we were freshmen? And you’re only now asking me out?”

Thor gives a bashful shrug. “You were… just so cool.”

“Cool?!” Loki sputters. He certainly was not cool—he had been nothing but limbs and pimples hidden under a thick layer of too-dark foundation.

“With your long hair and wearing all black and being all mysterious… Um. And the eyeliner. I liked that, too.” Thor blushes. “You seemed way out of my league. And it just got worse every summer… you just somehow got hotter.”

Loki wants to snort, because clearly Thor has that all wrong. At the end of every school year, Loki would spend those weeks vowing that he would get over his crush, and every autumn it would only get worse. Thor would come back to school taller than before, bigger and golden all over, and utterly ruined Loki’s plans. “I don’t think you understand how high school works,” Loki informs him. “The star football player isn’t supposed to be one who doesn’t feel good enough for the artsy nerd.”

“Well…” Thor says, coy, “I’m not a football player anymore.” He reaches out, hesitant, and when Loki doesn’t pull away, Thor brushes his fingers over the back of Loki’s hand.

Loki’s heart melts a little and he turns his hand to take Thor’s. “So, my number, huh?” Thor nods eagerly. “You’re paying. And if you even think about asking me to put out on the first date—”

“Brock is a little bitch,” Thor scoffs. “I don’t want that. I just want… you. To get to know you.” He blushes again, aiming one of those blinding smiles at Loki. “Maybe kiss you a little.”

“You want to kiss me now, don’t you, you sap?”

“Maybe…”

Butterflies rage a battle in Loki’s belly. “Well, you can’t. My lipstick would smudge.”

“I don’t care.”

Is Loki imagining things, or is Thor closer? He doesn’t remember seeing Thor step forward and yet—

“I do.”

“Do you really?” Thor’s definitely closer, closer than anyone has ever been. Loki can see the stubble on Thor’s cheeks, smell the fresh sweat clinging to him.

Loki gulps. “No,” he whispers, and moves in those final few inches.

The kiss—more an awkward bumping of lips—lasts a flash of a second before Loki jerks back, groping for some semblance of composure even as his knees go weak and the butterflies escalate to nuclear war. Thor exhales a gust of breath. He looks reverent, like he just saw the Second Coming. There’s not even a smudge of Loki’s lipstick on his mouth, something that Loki is both relieved and inexplicably disappointed about.

Thor leans in, but he doesn’t push for another kiss. Instead, he presses his forehead to Loki’s in a gesture that seems even more intimate. “So… is that a yes to giving me your number?”

“Yeah.” Loki flattens his palm on Thor’s chest and shoves him back, but can’t stop himself from smiling. “Hold on.” He crouches and digs into his school bag for a spare piece of paper. Loki tears one out of his science notebook, then scribbles his number down. Thor beams when Loki gives the paper over. Aiming for nonchalant, Loki scuffs the concrete with the toe of his Converse and says, “My mom won’t be here for another forty minutes or so. If you want to wait with me.”

“I would,” Thor replies with a sigh. “But Coach called my dad. He’ll probably be here soon.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

Flushing, Loki reaches for Thor’s hand and gives him a reassuring squeeze. “Well, if you aren’t grounded, I’m free on Sunday.”

A car pulls in, looping around the parking lot to the front of the school building. Thor squeezes back. “I probably won’t be,” he confesses, “Dad hates Brock’s dad. I’ll text you.”

The two break apart, sharing hesitant smiles, before Thor turns back. He flashes a teasing smile. “Hey Loki... were you gonna sneak into the locker room later?”

Loki gnaws at his bottom lip. “Maybe. Guess we’ll never know... since you’re not on the team anymore,” he says with a shrug.

“I might have to beg Coach to let me back on.” With a wink and a grin, Thor hops into the car to be whisked off home. The door barely has time to slam closed before Loki hearing the rising rumble of what must be Thor’s dad working himself up into a rant.

Loki watches until the vehicle is out of sight before he presses two fingers to his lips, still tingling from the pitiful kiss. He’ll have a better one on Sunday, he thinks, but first he should come up with some way to ‘thank’ Rumlow for his unwitting part in all this…

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> check me out on tumblr, messing around under the same name


End file.
